Immersive Technologies as a Framework for Assessing Mobility Policy Impacts

The development of effective mobility policies, whether infrastructure investments or the introduction of new services, depends significantly on the ability to accurately predict user acceptance and behavioral responses. SP surveys, the traditional tool for measuring these impacts, typically involve the presentation of hypothetical scenarios using simple, inaccurate formats, such as text or static graphics. This often leads to a "reality gap," where respondents fail to achieve sufficient cognitive immersion and/or abstractly translate written descriptions into meaningful travel experiences. Such methodological discrepancies can lead to inconsistent and biased preference estimates; the ecological validity of the resulting transportation models is significantly compromised. Recent and rapid developments in immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality, pioneered in other sectors, are very promising. These technologies enable high-fidelity, interactive, and perceptually rich simulations of future transportation environments. The integration of immersive visualization techniques increases the traveler's sense of presence in this hypothetical context, allowing them to more naturally internalize the choice scenario. This directly enhances the ecological validity of SP surveys to generate more reliable preference data, which is crucial for evidence-based evaluation and effective implementation of mobility policies. The objective of the paper is to study and analyze the main immersive technologies, such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each. Furthermore, the first applications in the transport sector will be analyzed as decision support systems to make informed choices on the usefulness of policies aimed at improving the transport system.